


You're like a broken down Chevy (All you need is fresh coat of paint)

by Demenior, neinlives



Series: Cuddle House [10]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Mood Whiplash, Multi, Painting, no actual sex shown srry, sexual um hinting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demenior/pseuds/Demenior, https://archiveofourown.org/users/neinlives/pseuds/neinlives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Animorphs move into the new house, and decide a new color scheme is in order</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're like a broken down Chevy (All you need is fresh coat of paint)

**Author's Note:**

> So um the second half got really weird and I...don't know what happened. I apologize for your mood whiplash.

“It’s grey.”

“Hmmm?”

“I figured it out. What’s wrong with it. It’s grey.”

Cassie put her finger in her book and closed it, finally looking up to where Tobias was slouched in the doorway, his shoulders hunched in and his eyes fixed on the ground like he was trying to meld with it. The soft light from the reading lamp above her chair made him look gaunt and tired. It had been a hard week for all of them. “What’s grey?” she asked, rubbing her wrist against her face out of habit even though she’d already washed away the black smears of newspaper that had decorated her fingers every evening this week. Somehow, in the last few years, the six of them had managed to accumulate a surprising amount of stuff, and unpacking it all was exhausting. 

Tobias’s eyes flicked up to hers warily. Cassie still hadn’t figured out why he was in human morph. She suspected that as a hawk, the new house would be stifling and shuttered after years living in the open. That and the fact that opening doors and moving boxes would be hard with a set of wings. “The house is grey,” Tobias said softly.

Cassie sighed, putting her book down and tamping down on a petty burst of annoyance. It was true that the house had a few shortcomings that they hadn’t noticed when they had toured it with the realtor, and that the chemistry between the six of them had been off since they moved in, strained and maudlin, but she had expected Tobias to try. They had all spent a lot of time and emotional battering – not to mention _money_ – to find a place that seemed right to all of them, and this had been the one that fit. This had been the only one that seemed right, and now, somehow, it wasn’t. “Tobias,” she said, as calmly and reasonably as she could. “I know it doesn’t seem very good right now, but the house just needs a little work. It’s not about the house, you know? We just need some time to-”

“No, I mean it’s _grey_ ,” he broke in. He shuffled back and forth in the doorway a little, a faint blush staining the tips of his ears as he hesitated, then reached into his back pocket to pull out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here, come look.”

Curious, Cassie pushed herself to her feet and crossed the room. He beckoned her into the hall, flicking on the overhead light and pressing the paper against the wall beneath it. “See?”

Cassie blinked at the paper. The wall, which had seemed to be such a brilliant white on  the sunny day they had first seen the house, was indeed grey. Tobias shoved the paper back in his pocket, his blush spreading as he murmured, “Don’t tell Marco, okay? But I read a lot of…things…about depression and stuff when I was younger, and they had this part about color psychology, and how living with the wrong colors can upset your zen or…” He ducked his head, throwing her a sheepish grin. “I just…it can’t be helping, right?”

“Yeah.” Cassie beamed at him. It shouldn’t have meant so much, but they had been trying to pack themselves into this new house in the midst of a tireless grey drizzle all week, and she was ready for anything that said this house wouldn’t always feel so sad and cold. “No, you’re right.”

A slow smile, quiet and proud, spread across his face, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, looking down again. “So, I was thinking, before you and Jake go buy the big stuff, we should paint it. At least the kitchen and the bedrooms and stuff, just to make it a little less…grey. I know you were gonna go pick it up tomorrow, but it would probably be easier to just…”

“No, that’s a great idea.” Cassie felt twenty times lighter, now that she had a direction and an outlet with which to fight against the mood grating on the people she loved. Unable to contain herself, she pulled the still-blushing Tobias into a hug, planting a kiss on his cheek when he squawked in surprise. “I’m gonna go tell Jake.”

Tobias looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself and with all this physical contact, but he was grinning at her shyly. “Kay,” he said softly.

She hesitated for a second, because Tobias wasn’t quite as visceral as the rest of them when it came to the physical end of their relationship. She knew – in detail that had made her heart pound a little, via the ever-eager to narrate Marco – that Tobias was no slouch when it came to the sexually physical side of human interaction, but he didn’t seem to be as confident in the more casual side. Cassie hoped this house could change that, because that was the side that Cassie loved the most about their relationship – the welcome-home kisses from Jake, the warm pressure of Rachel’s long fingers between hers. Movies cuddled into the warm heat of Ax’s side. The frequent brush of Marco’s hand against her waist or her elbow or her back when it was their turn to buy groceries, the knowledge that he wanted the contact just to assure himself that she was still beside him.

Tobias’s blue eyes watched her quietly from beneath his lashes, warm and affectionate even if he couldn’t show it with his stiff posture, and Cassie leaned forward anyways and pressed a chaste kiss to the faint smile curving his lips.

His bewildered blush and shy grin as she giggled and took off to find Jake were worth every second of it.

 ~~~

“Oh my _God,_ _yes_!” Marco crowed, grabbing an unfortunate shade of Tropicana orange off the discount shelf. “ _Tiger stripes_! Big Jake, we are totally painting your room with tiger stripes.”

“Marco,” Jake groaned for probably the third or fourth time since they’d made it in the door, but Rachel beat him to it. “Oh my God, _no_ ,” she countered vehemently. “I swear to God, Marco, you have the fashion sense of a centipede.”

Marco made a face at her. “Spoil sport. Besides, you don’t need fashion sense to pick a paint color.”

“If you want to live in a _circus_.”

“Says the girl who thinks we should live in a _rainbow_.”

Rachel huffed, indignant. “All I said was that we should have a complementary color set between the bottom floor and the top. I don’t know _why_ you had to turn it into such an issue. It’s really not that hard.”

“Oh yeah, not hard at all,” Marco scoffed. He flung his hand at the paint display behind them, all set up with the ‘regal home’ color pallet, a collection of paint cans in deep scarlet, dark green, a yellowish tan and a greenish blue. “We’ll just start it off with Taxxon belly yellow, and after that we can start in on Hork-Bajir green with a nice splash of blue blood [TM3] to round it off.” He carefully skirted naming the scarlet, but he didn’t have to. They had all avoiding suggesting any shade of red. Marco leveled Rachel with an exasperated glare. “I don’t know about you, Rachel, but I’m not that into your whole dark and broody color palette.”

Rachel glared back, but she had paled a few degrees. “Thank you for ruining that forever,” she bit off at him, rolling her eyes. “I’m afraid to suggest lilac to you. Can you possibly ruin that?”

“ _Oh_ no. Xena, I am _not_ living in a purple house.”

“It’s not _purple_! Purple is…redder! It’s lilac!”

“Guys…” Jake threw Cassie a pleading look, but her and Tobias had disappeared with Ax to try and explain the paint shaker and how it made the rainbow of colors on the wall to the awestruck Andelite. “Look, can we just pick a color and go? We have a truck full of furniture sitting outside, and we still have to unload when we get there.” He looked around at the shelves. “How about blue?”

“Blue is cold, Jake,” Rachel told him patiently. “It’s a sleeping color, for bedrooms or bathrooms mostly. We need something warmer for the living space.”

“Okay, then.” He glanced around. “Um, brown?”

His cousin shook her head. “Too many wooden floors. Between that and the sofa, we would just about -”

“Yellow?”

“Hell _no_ ,” Marco broke in. “I’m gonna veto that right now. No yellow. I still vote orange.”

“You know, orange without stripes I could handle.”

“Oh my God. Not both of you. Look, nothing even vaguely resembling a tiger is going on our walls.”

“Guys?”

All three of the bickering Animorphs ignored Cassie’s patient voice. “Why not?” Rachel teased. “It’ll match the awesome sheet set we bought you.”

“I _cannot_ believe I let you talk me into that.”

“Guys?”

“So yes?” Marco asked, swinging the terrible can of orange paint like a prize over their shopping cart. “Orange is a go?”

“ _No_.”

“Guys.”

“Marco, you can’t use that color of orange!”

“ _Guys!_ ”

The three of them paused, turning in surprise to Cassie, and her and Tobias held up the cans of white paint they’d found.  Ax seemed to have disappeared, although Jake suspected the crash he had just heard from the roller aisle had something to do with it. “We’re painting it white,” Cassie said sternly, the smile tugging at her mouth belying her amusement.

Jake blew out a sigh of relief. “Yeah, okay.”

“White?” Rachel moaned. “But, Cassie, that’s so plain…can’t I have one little color? Just one?”

“One room,” Jake said firmly, giving her a look like he could possibly control her, even though they all knew Rachel was basically unstoppable once she set her mind to something and Jake was a huge pushover.

“Blue?” She asked hopefully, batting her eyelashes innocently.

Jake tried to hide his smile. “Blue works.”

In the end, the six of them left with five cans of white, a light blue for the kitchen, lilac for Rachel’s room, and a deep green that Ax said reminded him of his home world for everything else.

 ~~~

“I still do not understand,” Ax repeated patiently, following Rachel as she dug through some of the clothes they had accumulated for the Andelite’s human morph, searching for a shirt not too precious to ruin with paint. “You bought these cans to adorn the walls of your residence?”

“Yeah. To change the color.” Rachel held up a grey t-shirt they’d found at a second-hand store, but rejected it as much too attractive.

Ax wrinkled his nose. “Is it not better to leave the walls? As naturally as possible? Perhaps we should remove the color that already covers them instead.”

“No, Ax…” Rachel sighed, searching for a way to explain the concept of a house when the claustrophobia of the walls themselves already pressed in on Ax most of the time. “It’s not really about…the walls, you know? It’s more like…the mood.”

Ax blinked at her slowly, and she held a t-shirt up in front of him to examine it. “This is the part I don’t understand,” he said softly.

Tossing the shirt back into Ax’s drawers, Rachel stood up again. “Well, you know how when it’s rainy and dark out we tend to get grumpy? And when it’s bright we’re less grumpy?”

“I have noticed this,” Ax agreed slowly.

“The color thing is like that.” Rachel was digging through a bunch of Tobias’s shirts now. “It just…it’s less depressing.”

At that, Ax paused. “It makes you happy?”

Rachel stood up, dropping another shirt in the pile in disgust. “I can’t find anything, Ax. Let’s go find Jake, maybe he has-”

“Rachel.” Ax stopped her mid-frenzy, gripping her by the shoulders. “Adorning the walls. It makes you happy?”

Her face softened. “Yeah, Ax. That’s the general idea.”

Ax nodded once. “Then I will assist you.” A smile tugged at his mouth, a very Marco expression flickering across his face that Rachel was sure he hadn’t realized he had picked up. “Regardless of the shirt.”

Rachel blinked in surprise as he turned towards the door and led the way back towards the others without a second glance back. She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face. Too bad about the shirt, though.

Rachel admired his shoulders as he left. Maybe she could convince him to paint topless.

 ~~~

“Hey.”

Jake looked up to see Cassie leaning against the doorframe, enough of the hint of a smirk on her face that Jake could tell she had been checking him out from where he had bent to paint the edge of the wall. He grinned back at her cheekily. “Hey.” He stood, stretching the kinks out of his back. “Where’s Ax?”

“Finishing up the trim in the kitchen.” Cassie pushed off the door and walked over, carefully keeping to the newspaper paths they had laid out while her brush was still in her hand. “Need a hand?”

“Sure. You can grab the bottom, shortstuff. I just have to finish up top.”

She hipchecked him, crouching down to paint beside him. “Don’t you shortstuff me,” she teased lightly. “I am holding a brush, you know.”

Jake glanced down at her, unable to hold back a smile at the spatter of blue paint across the red bandana that held her short curls back from her face. Her face was tilted slightly, her eyes intent on the delicate line she was painting just above the old oak trim, and he could see as smear of white paint on one cheek. There was another smear just above the v of her shirt, this one delicate blue against her dark skin, and Jake wanted to see if it was still wet, taste the chemical kick of it against his tongue. “I’m sure I could take you,” he said, and it came out deeper than he had meant it to.

Cassie looked up at him, a slow, sly grin forming on her face. “Oh, could you?” she asked, her voice almost a purr, and she stood to place her brush in his paint tray.

Jake set his brush down as well. “Mmmhmm,” he agreed with a smile, unable to resist brushing his thumb over the smear of paint on her cheek any longer. He leaned down to kiss her.

And was met by the broad stroke of a paint brush down the side of his face.

Jake reared back, sputtering, and Cassie danced away, howling with laughter. She shrieked and took off in the direction of Ax when he had righted himself, but Jake was on her in three strides, grabbing her from behind and getting a decoration of paint blotches over his arms for his trouble. He picked her up bodily, Cassie still giggling even as he walked across the room with her trapped in a bear hug, and deposited her against the wall by his brush. “That-” he informed her, pinning her wrists and plucking the brush from her hand. “-was not very nice.”

She grinned up at him impishly. “But Jake…” Cassie leaned back against the wall, batting eyes at him innocently. “I thought you could take me?”

Jake silenced her with a growl and a kiss, which she happily returned. He pinned her wrists above her with the hand still holding the brush, her arms loose and easy in his hold, even when he felt the paint begin to drip down his arm.

The mood broke when Jake bent to press his mouth to the paint on the swell Cassie’s breasts and the stripe of quickly-drying paint on his face stuck to them. He pulled back off with an audible peeling of suction, and they both dissolved into a giggling pile. “I think maybe we need to finish this after a shower,” Cassie told him, her own face striped with a line of paint where his cheek had been.

“I think maybe we need to finish this _in_ the shower,” Jake countered with a grin.

Cassie’s eyes darkened further. “Should we get the others, then?” she breathed against his skin. “Test out your theory that six of us can fit into that monster?”

Jake grinned. He was full to bursting with affection for all five of his friends at the moment, and that sounded like the perfect solution. “Sure.”

“Alright.” Cassie pushed him off with some reluctance, indicating the wall behind her, which now bore a very incriminating smear in the otherwise perfect coat. “I’m going to fix this up quick. You grab the three upstairs. They should be done painting Rachel’s room by now.”

“Alright.” Jake headed for the stairs. “Get Ax too.”

The newspaper trail leading to Rachel’s room was much more disturbed than that in the rest of the house, and as Jake got closer he could hear from the commotion inside that Rachel, Tobias and Marco were probably _not_ painting. Rolling his eyes heavenwards in supplication, Jake rapped on the door. “Hey guys?”

To his surprise, the door banged open and Marco stumbled out. He caught himself on the doorframe and straightened, meeting Jake’s stare with thunderstruck and slightly dopey eyes. Jake raised his eyebrows in shock. Marco was covered, from his feet to his hairline, in purple paint, and was 90 percent naked. “What happened to you?”

“Lilac, man,” Marco babbled, a monumental grin splitting his face. “Best color ever. I support it one hundred percent. A hundred and fifty percent. Let’s paint the whole house lilac.”

“Sooo…” Jake tried to look past Marco through the slightly open door, but then he heard a definitively-Rachel shriek and a bang that sounded suspiciously like a paint can, and decided he really didn’t want to know. “Does this mean you don’t want to join me and Cassie in the shower?”

Marco slumped bonelessly against the wall, smearing purple over the still-grey surface. “Gimme at least ten minutes,” he sighed out, tipping his head back. “Both at once. Jesus. Maybe thirty.”

Jake blinked at the implications of that, taking in his friend’s thoroughly fucked-out demeanor. “So, do you think Rachel and Tobias want to then?” Rachel cried out again in a way that definitely went straight to his groin, and Jake stared into the room. “What are they _doing_?”

“I don’t even know, but it should _probably_ be illegal.”

As if on cue, the door swung open, and Rachel leapt out – fully naked, but less purple – and grabbed Marco around the waist with a growl. She picked him up – and Jake didn’t even know she could _do_ that, his best friend was obviously the biggest pipsqueak _ever_ – and threw him back into the room, and Jake decided his safest course of action was to back away slowly.

Cassie was just finishing up when he jogged back down the stairs, and she looked up in surprise. “They’re not coming?”

“You don’t even want to know,” Jake told her. “Where’s Ax?”

“Washing brushes.”

Jake wandered into the kitchen to find the Andelite, and he had to stop and laugh when he saw him. Rachel had insisted Ax paint without a shirt on, and the Andelite’s arms and torso was covered in blue. “Felt the need to add a little blue to this morph, did you?” he asked with a grin.

“Prince Jake.” Ax turned from the sink, holding his arms away from himself gingerly. “I am afraid the paint will not come off. And demorphing with it on is…” He made a face. “An unpleasant experience.”

“I’m sure we can fix that,” Cassie’s voice came from behind them, and Jake turned to watch her saunter over to Ax, sidling up behind him and wrapping her arms around his paint-spattered torso. “Care to join us in the shower?”

Ax narrowed his eyes in such a good impression of Jake’s thinking face that Cassie almost broke out laughing. “That is where you bathe, correct? That would be acceptable.”

“Oh, Ax my man,” Jake declared. “There are _many_ more things to be done in a shower .”

Ax cocked his head to the side, and Jake saw a flash of amusement in his eyes. “I believe those would also be acceptable.”

“Alright then,” Jake declared, and winked at the Andelite. “Cassie’s first.”

It turned out Ax was much, much better at shower sex than he was at painting.

 ~~~

Later, when they were all clean and the brushes had all been put away, they collapsed in a pile on the couch. They had to prop the TV up on a stack of boxes, but they somehow coaxed their cable into life and found a documentary.

Jake, who had found himself snuggled between Tobias and Marco and was wholeheartedly feeling no desire to move, picked idly at a stripe of purple paint that had stubbornly affixed itself to Marco’s arm. “So, lilac, huh?”

Marco shifted, adjusting himself. “I was comfy. Don’t talk about it. Jesus.”

Jake laughed, the sound a rumbling vibration through all of them. “Well then. Guess what I’m getting you for Christmas.”

“Oh my God,” Marco groaned. “Don’t you dare.”

“Mental shopping list:-”

“Jake, I’m serious.”

“-one pair of purple-”

“Dude, come on, seriously-”

“-silk panties-”

“Jake, stoWHAT?!?!”

Marco was off the couch in a minute, and the realization of what he had just said had Jake turning a deep scarlet. He blinked a couple times, licking his lips nervously, but no excuses came to mind. “I…uh…”

Rachel popped up from the other end of the couch. “ _Wait_ ,” she said heatedly. “Does that mean I can buy _you_ silk panties?”

“Figures it’s a Berenson thing,” Tobias grumbled, and Cassie collapsed on his arm in a fit of giggles.

Marco was an odd shade of red. “ _You_ ,” he said, pointing at Jake and then the stairs. “ _Upstairs. Right now_.”

Jake didn’t have to be told twice.

In the end, Rachel bought both of them panties for Christmas, but she still never got back her pair of red ones that mysteriously disappeared.


End file.
